Glory Days…

Can I share some glory stories? Because my kids don’t believe me and if it’s on the internet, then they’ll know it’s true.

Thanks to my mom and dad and youth pastor, I’ve seen my share of adventures including scuba diving caves in Cabo and surfing in Hawaii (where I breathed in so much of the ocean that I gave myself pnemonia.) Haaaa. I hiked a couple 14ers (literally crawling after the last false summits in tears. Not pretty, but I did summited both!). I skiied double black diamonds (comedically, stuck floating between the moguls they way you’d imagine if Lucille Ball went skiing). I learned all kinds of acro flips in swing dancing (and was definitely dropped a few times). We learned to trust fall from high wooden beams, rock climb up the chimneys of the Flat Irons, water ski, and snow tube behind the back of truck on a frozen lake.

My first missionary trip was in the back of van called Hersey with people I just met two weeks prior. They have ketchup flavor chips and coffee flavor gum in Canada. Did you know that? We worked with kids in Kingston and my heart melted. The next summer, we went to a little ranchito in Mexico the following year and drank our water from a trough. The little girls there giggled when I said my name and I always wondered why. They called me gatita blanca and pet my long blonde hair. I felt like I was home there. A little town square was the first place I gave my testimony in public with a microphone and a boom box. I cried through the whole thing and used the Spanish I had just learned in high school. I’m not sure anyone could understand a word. Not just because of my Spanish but because when I cry, voice gets muy tan alta and impossible to decipher. But. Like the 14er. I braved it. And everyone was gracious and ministered to me kindly after. (Are you laughing out loud, because I am.)

I gave my life to Jesus on a backpacking trip during a 24 solo in the mountains. That was the day I went from believing in Jesus to giving him my all and my everything. He back Lord of my life that day. And I’m forever changed.

After God saved my dad from West Nile, we went on a Rich Steves tour of Europe as a family. Healing, bond. Interestingly, the variety of toilet shapes and sizes was a highlight of our amazing trip together. Oh! And I was commissioned to write a poem for the first time about how much I love clotheslines.

I got to ride horses and enjoy the Southern Star and the way the toilets flush in the opposite direction in Brasil, where God gave me the gift of speaking fluent Portuguese after learning only Where’s the toilet? and Oi, tudo bem? and Obrigada. I graduated college with magna cum laude honors and a degree in Latino Poetry in it’s Cultural Context. (I giggle every time I say that.) I wrote my own major and proposed it to the entire board of deans because I wanted to study contemporary Latino poets as they inspired me more than the old dead white guys. (No offense, Hopkins. I still love you too.) I studied song writing, children’s book writing, anthropology, race and ethnicity, Mexican American culture, linguistics. I had the dreamiest education. The only thing that would’ve been smart is to take a few marketing or business classes.

When I graduated, I felt like the Lord just told me to stay put in town until my guy showed up. And sure enough… here came Dan. My total dreamboat. I had been praying for a swing dance partner and got so much more.